Why birds can fly over Mount Everest (2020)

https://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/why-birds-can-fly-over-mount-everest

by Phithagoras • 5 years ago

250 108 5 years ago

dmd2• 5 years ago

If you remove the word 'can' from the title, you get another interesting question, and some scientists think the answer is that the bar-headed geese have been doing it since before there was a mountain range there!

pvg• 5 years ago

If that's true they've also been pigheaded since before there were pigs which probably explains the name.

jhgb3• 5 years ago

bar-headed geese have been doing it since before there was a mountain range there

The Himalayas formed fifty millions years ago. Geese apparently appeared ten million years ago. How would this be possible?

dmd2• 5 years ago

They weren't nearly that tall then though. E.g.:

“The bar-heads have done that migration for millions of years before the Himalayas were as tall as they are now, and the birds have been pushed as the mountains have moved up to go higher and higher,” says coauthor Julia York, now a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, in an interview with the Times. York, who played foster parent to seven geese, adds, “They’re amazing athletes.”

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/bar-headed-geese-...

gerdesj2• 5 years ago

It wasn't that particular species at the time but a precursor.

Your grandad is/was hom. sap. sap. but your (50,000,000 / 20)th grandad was one of quite a few possibilities, mostly ape and no sign of homo. I'm using a simple 20 year per generation model here. That's 2,500,000 generations ago. Here in the UK on telly, a comedian was shown how his (2021 - 1239) / 20 = 39 or so generational ancestor was English King Edward I - "longshanks". 39 generations gets you to 1230 or so, 2,500,000 generations is quite a long time ago.

So, let's look at these geese. 50M years back, the "dinosaurs" flying that route - let's call them "Goosey" - already had phenomenally efficient lungs compared to say mammals. As the land rose, they simply adapted a bit. Given how efficient their lungs are I doubt there was much to do.

It looks miraculous to us but we don't have those lungs. We didn't evolve the double ended lungs and hollow bones etc because we simply didn't need them or the cost of some part of that mix was detrimental for our use case or "we" simply rolled a double three. Evolution is weird. Well, no it isn't, that implies a blind watchmaker/intelligent design or nonsense as I prefer to call it.

In the words of a famous bloke: "Evolution is as evolution does". No more and no less. There are some geese that are able to fly over some mountains.

smegcicle2• 5 years ago

tldr bird respiratory system is very effective, they breathe in one end of their lungs and out the other, always with either a full breath in their lungs or two breaths in their air sacs (one fresh, one ready to be exhaled)

http://www.lslbo.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/bird-lungs.j...

Mountain_Skies• 5 years ago

We already have artificial continuous flow hearts, next up: continuous flow lungs.

polishdude20• 5 years ago

Like a literal jet engine. Continuous flow of air

soylentnewsorg2• 5 years ago

Well this seems interesting... So from my knowledge of high school honors bio, blood vessels have these long slow muscles that also help pump blood. If a heart pumps continuously, wouldn't that create back pressure on the vein/artery muscles, which would in turn increase your blood pressure whenever the vessel muscles contract to pump? And if you got an artificial heart, I'd think higher blood pressure is a bad thing?

From my quick research just now, it seems continuous flow hearts are not better because they pump differently. That's just a side effect with no benefit that's noted in studies. A continuous pump is much smaller, and for long-term total heart replacement, is the only thing that can be small enough to fit in the body. In fact, it's noted in a case study that they're not sure about the long term effects of not having pulses, and that's something that will need to be studied.

Now as far as the lungs - I think that would be a bad idea too. We'd need separate flow-through pathways to inhale and exhale. So two necks, or an exit hole in the chest. That takes up space and is another vector for infection. In addition, exhaling moisturizes the tissue, so you'd need much harsher intake tubes, and your exhale tubes would be constantly dripping water. All that extra space has to come from somewhere - meaning you now have less space for actual oxygenating tissue, resulting in worse oxygen capture. Now the diaphragm has to pump harder, because you're not extracting as much oxygen from your air intake.

Anywise, you had a funny comment, which I hopefully made funnier by responding to it seriously. We're a good team. Team Heart & Lungs they call us.

plantain• 5 years ago

Some people have (kinda) learnt to - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_breathing

dorfsmay3• 5 years ago

are birds able to take advantage of air speed when flying to get higher air pressure in their lungs?

smegcicle2• 5 years ago

'pushing the envelope' is actually a term from the bird-racing nerds community for packing those things while staying aerodynamic

Johnythree• 5 years ago

Apparently swans (and similar) birds have long necks to provide a constant amount of re-breathed air (eg a built-in inefficiency threshold).

Because their lungs are tied to their flight muscles, they would overbreath at cruising speed. So the long necks provide just the right amount of re-breathed CO2 to offset this.

(I hope I have this correct)

KineticLensman• 5 years ago

Some falcons have nostrils that are designed to slow down the air flow so that they can continue to breathe while diving at very high speeds. Even though they exercise hard to catch their prey they aren’t winded as a result. Unlike say cheetahs that are completely out of breath at the end of a chase and have to breathe for a bit before they can eat..

einpoklum• 5 years ago

Wow, that story is amazing well-written. I would definitely tell it to my kids (if and when I have them).

simorley• 5 years ago

So that's what dinosaur tastes like.

ARandomerDude• 5 years ago

It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five-ounce bird could not carry a one-pound coconut.

icelancer• 5 years ago

African swallows are non-migratory, man.

dang• 5 years ago

One past thread:

Why Birds Can Fly over Mount Everest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23639294 - June 2020 (96 comments)

aspectmin• 5 years ago

I love reading both Nautilus and Quanta. Great articles.

m4634• 5 years ago

an interesting thing is that though birds have super-efficient lungs, they can be very fragile.

As any parrot owner knows, if you overheat a teflon pan, all the birds inside your house will die. So bird owners use stainless steel. There are other non-stick pans available, but it's really hard to wade through the marketing to figure out if overheating will kill the pet that's been in your family for years or even decades.

unrelated, the name of this article made me wonder if it was about thin air and lift, thinking how helicopters can't fly over everest.

But a mountain like everest might have a huge amount of updrafts to lift birds into the sky.

If you've ever stopped at an ridge overlook along california highway 1, you might see something curious. the ridges are bird-superhighways. the ocean air hits the cliffs and deflects upwards, and this updraft lets birds "surf" up and down the coast. So if you stand there and are patient, you'll see lines of gulls cruise by going north or south without flapping.

photonic37• 5 years ago

If you’re in the Bay Area, you can stop by Fort Funston and see humans using this effect as well.

In the hang gliding world, ridge lift is a wonderful phenomenon that enables one to stay airborne almost indefinitely, with much better predictability than thermal soaring. The lift band is well defined by the incoming wind and upward deflection. When you’re done, just turn inland and exit the lift band.

ofcrpls• 5 years ago

Same thing at Torrey Pines, if you are in San Diego.

moffkalast• 5 years ago

I think the wrong assumption here is that we humans are completely fine with teflon overheating on the other hand. PFAS chemicals released really do mess with just about everything and anything in our body, the results just aren't seen on short time scales.

We really should be taking steps towards a worldwide ban of this yet another asbestos-ass miracle material which sounds too good to be true because well, it is.

tapland2• 5 years ago

Some ovens are teflon coated, and some of those have cleaning modes that effectively kill of pet birds.

I don't get how that can even be allowed ad a regular household appliance.

725686• 5 years ago

Last week, on Last Week Tonight, John Oliver talks about PFAS, which was very interesting. Not only teflon, but all kind of repellent fabrics like Gore-tex:

https://youtu.be/9W74aeuqsiU

beambot• 5 years ago

Canary in the coal mine...?

b1124• 5 years ago

To me, this indicates that FDA testing / validation needs to be heavily modified.

Teflon is 100%, perfectly safe, as long as it never overheats. It is completely inert, causes no problems, can be eaten, etc.

As you say, when it overheats? It becomes toxic. I read some of the FDA docs referenced during approval, and it was along the lines of "As long as overheating does not occur".

They knew.

But then ran with the premise of "Citizens won't accidentally overheat their pan!". It really only takes a second! A pan on the stove, a distraction (kids, phone, a loud noise outside, whatever), a simple mistake, and BAM pan is overheated.

I'd say every teflon pan in use is toxic, essentially.

I don't know if the approval process has changed or not, but it seems like depending upon people to have 100% perfect adherence to pan heat levels is a bit much...

What other substances are approved this way? Frankly, I think any non-stick substance is suspicious, and use stainless steel.

The trick? Never use soap to wash it. Just use water, soak if needed, and if you can't get it all off? The next cooking will just be all the tastier. :P

Let the grease soak in, let the oils soak in, it does season a bit.

margalabargala• 5 years ago

Helicopters have landed on the top of Mt Everest, more than once.

True that not every helicopter can do it, but it can be done.

praptak• 5 years ago

Yes. Curiously, the pilot reported that they also used updrafts.

m4634• 5 years ago

I thought the problem was that in the thin air, the rotors have to spin much faster and the tips go supersonic.

Would rotors with large surface area be how those helicopters work?

deckard1• 5 years ago

efficiency and fragility seem to go together (see our current global container shipping fiasco and our just-in-time production world)

The life at the deepest points of the ocean also seem quite fragile.

Also, "canary in the coal mine". Canaries were sent into coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other gases because they were more sensitive than humans. The bird would die before humans, giving an early warning.

valenterry• 5 years ago

As any parrot owner knows, if you overheat a teflon pan, all the birds inside your house will die.

How about the newer ceramic ones? I assume nothing will happen?

tdeck• 5 years ago

Anodized aluminum would probably be safe also.

coryrc2• 5 years ago

Oil alone in roughly the same temperature range has the same effect on birds.

That being said, I have nitrided, stainless steel and cast iron cookware despite not owning a bird.

andromeduck• 5 years ago

Where do you find nitrided pans?

tomlockwood• 5 years ago

Another interesting thing that links with the latter part of the article - this was exactly why canaries were used in coal mines. The lungs of birds rapidly absorb anything in the air, meaning they'd die before the coal miners.

BrandoElFollito2• 5 years ago

The main reason was to protect against carbon monoxide. Humans do not feel it and there is no body alert, like we have for carbon dioxide for instance.

krono• 5 years ago

Protip: Get some carbon steel pans (can't go wrong with de Buyer brand) or good old cast iron.

Though, even with teflon gone from your kitchen, you've still got to be careful with other toxic fume sources such as overheated oil or the wax coating that most new pans come with :)

As for the pans: Just use them as you would any other pan and after a while you'll find them to be just as non-stick as any one of those overpriced poison pans. Don't bother with flaxseed oil as people on the internet like to recommend, soapy water is fine as long as you dry the pans well afterwards, and if you want to use metal cooking utensils in your metal pan don't let anyone stop you.

secondcoming• 5 years ago

thinking how helicopters can't fly over everest.

A specially built helicopter did land at the summit.

[0] https://youtu.be/iu46fJDUvog

gadders2• 5 years ago

TIL Richard Stallman uses steel pans.

blacklight• 5 years ago

The author seems to pinpoint the cause of the great Permian-Triassic extinction to the acquired ability of microorganisms to process lignin, while most of the researchers attribute it to the extensive Siberian Traps eruptions.

Granted, decaying lignin subtracts oxygen from the atmosphere, but had that happened alone the levels of oxygen would have gone down quite slowly. What we see instead is a drop from ~30% to 12% within a few hundreds of thousands of years. It means that a catastrophic event (such as prolonged supervolcanic eruptions) probably played a bigger role.

kashkhan• 5 years ago

Even if you converted all the atmospheric CO2 to O2, oxygen levels will not increase by more than 1%. So where did the rest come from and go to?

rsj_hn• 5 years ago

It came from CO2 and other carbon gasses. IIRC, according to current theory, there were 3 major climates in the earth. In the first climate, the atmosphere was volcanic gasses, many of which were blown off into space, leaving the second climate of carbon gases as a residue, and then this was absorbed into rocks as well as consumed by CO2 breathing lifeforms.

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/earth-s-ea...

jonnycomputer• 5 years ago

has the lignin story held up though? Wikipedia's article on Coal suggests that a 2016 paper "refuted" the idea. I don't really follow this area of research, so would be happy if someone more knowledgeable chimed in about it.

ripvanwinkle• 5 years ago

This is very well written, I now have a story to read to my son this weekend.

On that note, I'd welcome pointers to similar narratives that explain evolution, the formation of the planet, the universe etc.

blmurch• 5 years ago

My father wrote that and he just changed the opening line to include all of his grandchildren, not just his niece as he originally wrote it. I will be reading it to David in the near future. He's only 6. I don't know of any other narratives, but I know he was talking to John Lasseter about Lignin to maybe get the idea into movie form.

Why birds can fly over Mount Everest (2020)

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